


excerpted from The Adventure of the Plum-Colored Glow, the Potato, and the Really Good Chocolates (Book 3 in the Madcap Adventures of Amelia Pond, age 7, Time Traveler)

by belmanoir



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-11
Updated: 2012-09-11
Packaged: 2017-11-14 00:45:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Amelia's turn to choose where to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	excerpted from The Adventure of the Plum-Colored Glow, the Potato, and the Really Good Chocolates (Book 3 in the Madcap Adventures of Amelia Pond, age 7, Time Traveler)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jadelennox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadelennox/gifts).



> who said: "I really would like to read about the Madcap Adventures of Amelia Pond, age 7, as she explores all of time and space with the Doctor in the TARDIS. Moreover, I would like to read these as age-appropriate stories." Read over by sionnain for Ancient Greek history errors! Any remaining errors are, of course, mine.

_Chapter One_

"Where shall we go today, Pond?" asked the Doctor. He spread his arms wide. "The sky's the limit! Or not, we can go past the sky if you'd like."

Now, before I tell you where she chose, I should stop and explain some things, in case you haven't read my previous accounts of the amazing adventures of Amelia Pond and the Doctor. Amelia Pond was a very special little girl, because the Doctor had chosen her to be his Companion out of everybody in the whole universe. 

Who is the Doctor, you ask next? Well, he's not a doctor like the one you go to for shots and the measles. At first, Amelia thought he was a doctor like her cousin who taught at the University of London, because they both wore tweed jackets and talked a lot about things no one else was very interested in. But when she asked, the Doctor said, "Oh no, I could never be bothered with lectures and writing things down."

No, the Doctor is the last of the Time Lords, and he travels through space and time in a blue Police box that's bigger on the inside than the outside, having adventures.

You still look confused, don't you? No, don't nod, I can't actually see you. Anyway, I can't explain it any better than that, but don't let it worry you. Things are often confusing when the Doctor is around (as Amelia Pond could tell you) but they are also fun and interesting. Except for when they're very, very scary. 

So. On this particular day--don't ask _what_ day, that sort of thing gets very complicated when you're a time traveler--it was Amelia's turn to choose where they went. They always took turns, because after the Doctor chose her to be his Companion he got a book on child-rearing. (She was the smallest of all his Companions, he told her. That made her feel special.) The book said it was important to teach children the value of sharing and taking turns. 

Amelia thought that was stupid. She wasn't a baby and she already knew all about sharing. She always shared her pudding with Rory at school, because his mum was one of those health food nutters and didn't give him one. (Rory was Amelia's friend from before she was a time traveler, when she was just an ordinary but rather strange little girl in the small town of Leadworth in the country of England on the planet Earth. 

Amelia missed Rory, especially when the Doctor was busy or being a particularly annoying grown-up. She thought she might ask the Doctor to go back to Leadworth and invite Rory to come along, someday. But for right now, she liked having the Doctor all to herself.) (She remembered, though, that when they played trains she was always the engineer and Rory always had to shovel coal. So maybe sharing wasn't what she was _best_ at. She didn't tell the Doctor that.) 

But she didn't mind taking turns choosing where to go, because the Doctor knew lots more places than she did. 

"I want to go to Ancient Greece," she told him.

The Doctor smiled. "Do you? Which part?"

"I want to meet Pandora." Pandora was the heroine of Amelia's favorite book. She had been the first girl ever. Amelia thought she probably got lonely with all those boys and would like some company.

The Doctor laughed and knelt down so he could see her better. "Why, Amelia, Pandora is just a fairy tale!"

Amelia didn't think it was very fair of him to laugh at her, since before she met him, she had thought aliens and time machines were just fairy tales too. How was she supposed to know the difference? She crossed her arms and glared at him.

He laughed again and tugged at her hair. "Never mind, I think we can still have a smashing time in Ancient Greece. How about Athens? The Spartans are no fun at all, believe me."

"Good," Amelia said. "I'll go get dressed."

She never understood how the Wardrobe always had what she needed if she was the smallest Companion ever. She thought it was probably magic. (The Doctor said that the magic of today was the science of the future, but having spent as much time with the Doctor as she had, Amelia was pretty sure some things were just magic.) But this time, she couldn't find anything. "Doctor," she called, "I can't find a toga!"

The Doctor raced in and skidded to a stop in front of a small red sheet. "There's one right here," he said, picking it up.

"That's not a toga. Togas are white."

The Doctor laughed. "Togas are Roman, Pond. This is a peplos. Anyway, not everything in Ancient Greece was white, you know. People just think so, because the paint's worn off the statues." He picked up the red sheet and somehow very quickly turned it into a toga, even quicker than Amelia's Aunt Sharon (whom Amelia had lived with in Leadworth) when she was Pandora for Halloween.

Amelia looked in the mirror. Not bad. She wished the Doctor could do her hair like Aunt Sharon, too, but Amelia had learned quickly that he was no good with hair at all (although he was rather fond of braiding it into strange shapes). She would just have to wear it down. 

She kept her wellies on too. She had known, even before she met the Doctor, that they were exactly the right sort of footgear for adventuring. Since she had started time traveling, they had saved her life several times. (For example, if you read _The Adventure of the Light-Bulb, the Curling Iron, and the Oddly Shaped Bit of Wood_ , you will remember that Amelia's wellies insulated her from the unpleasant Mr. Edison's Direct Current until the Doctor and Mr. Tesla infiltrated his lab and cut the power to his Dreaded Machine, so that she could escape and defeat him.)

"You should put on a toga too," Amelia told the Doctor. 

The Doctor shook his head and said what he always said. (He said she didn't have to dress up, either, but Amelia liked dressing up, and she thought the TARDIS would be sad if no one used the Wardrobe.) "Bowties are cool. Come along, Pond."

And off they went.

 

_Chapter Two_

Soon they were walking down the street in Athens, munching on caramelized fig tarts from a cart. Aunt Sharon never let Amelia buy anything from a street cart. She said it gave you indigestion. Amelia had discovered from being the Doctor's Companion that this was sometimes true, but she thought it was worth the risk. The fig tart was very good.

She had expected all the buildings to be white and have lots of columns. Actually, many of them were made out of brick, with clay tiles on the roof. They passed a few buildings that did have lots of columns, but they were brightly painted with murals and lots of different colors. It must be like the togas--the peploses, Amelia corrected herself. The paint had just worn off them by the 21st century.

Amelia was about to ask what century they were in, when a naked man ran past them shouting, "Something found me! Something found me!" 

She stared at his willy, flopping about. Then the Doctor put his hand over her eyes. "You're worse than my aunt," Amelia said.

The Doctor said what he always said (because it always made Amelia giggle like a loon). "I'm the Doctor, I'm worse than everybody's aunt! And really, I know Archimedes has just made a very important scientific discovery, but you'd think he could remember there are children about."

Amelia had had a book about Archimedes, too, back when she lived in Leadworth. He had realized something (Amelia had never quite understood what) while taking a bath. "Isn't he supposed to be shouting 'I've found it'?" she asked. 

(Actually, she knew, he was supposed to be shouting "Eureka", which _means_ "I've found it" in Greek. Amelia had always been best in her form at French and she was a bit miffed that the TARDIS--that's the blue Police box's name--didn't let her learn any new languages, but instead translated everything into English when it got to her brain. But it was quite convenient to always understand what everyone was saying, so she wasn't _too_ miffed.)

The Doctor frowned. "Yes, and he isn't supposed to have that skin rash, either. Also, if that's Archimedes, we aren't in Athens at all. We're in Syracuse." He sighed. He wasn't very good at getting where he said he was going. He said it was a problem with the TARDIS but Amelia thought he might be a bad driver. "We'd better investigate. Pardon me, ma'am," he said to the proprietor of a linen cart. "Here is...some money." (The Doctor never really understood money, and he could never remember what it was worth at different places and times, so he usually ended up paying far too much for things. Amelia's Aunt Sharon would not have approved.) "I need a chiton for that gentleman." 

Then the Doctor held the chiton in one hand and Amelia's hand in the other and ran after Archimedes. _Chiton,_ it turned out, meant _peplos for boys_. Soon the scientist was draped and pinned and Amelia could look at him without the Doctor trying to cover her eyes. She could still see his strange purple rash, however. It covered him everywhere right up to half-way up his neck, and then stopped abruptly. He had darker skin than the Archimedes in Amelia's book. 

"What happened?" the Doctor asked.

"I don't _know_ what happened," Archimedes said. "I was in the bath trying to solve a rather difficult little problem posed to me by"--he straightened his shoulders so that his big curly beard stood straight away from his neck, as if he thought this next bit was very impressive indeed--"the _king_ , and I thought of the answer, and then suddenly there were all of these little purple things in the water with me. And they stung like a--" He looked down at Amelia and shut his mouth, which meant he had been going to say a naughty word. 

"I've heard naughty words before," Amelia said, feeling a little exasperated. The Doctor looked sheepish. "Before I met you, even," she told him.

The Doctor sighed. "So Archie--you don't mind if I call you Archie, do you?--why don't you tell me _exactly_ what you were doing when the purple things appeared, and while you're telling me that, we will walk back towards your house." He put his arm around Archimedes and turned him back in the direction he came from, smooth as anything. Amelia thought that he really shouldn't touch the rash, but it was hard to tell the Doctor what to do, so she usually didn't bother unless it was _very_ important.

"The king gave a goldsmith some very fine gold with which to make a crown for his new temple," Archimedes explained. "He's afraid that the crown is only gold on the outside. He wants me to find out whether this is true without damaging the crown. A rather difficult problem, as you can see."

"Mmm," said the Doctor, trying to be polite. Amelia thought he probably knew lots of ways to do that.

Archimedes harrumphed. "The difficulty, you see, is measuring the volume of the crown exactly. Now, I had the crown sitting on a table in my room, and when I got into my tub, it occurred to me that the water level changes. The volume of water that moves and the volume of my body are equal!" 

"Archimedes' Principle, yes," said the Doctor, nodding. "Of course it isn't called that yet. But it will be."

Archimedes blinked. "Wha--? It will? When? How do you know that?" People said that to the Doctor a lot.

"Oh, didn't I mention? We're time travelers. I'm the Doctor and this is Amelia Pond." The Doctor held out his hand. 

Archimedes looked as if he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with it. "But time travel isn't possible," he said with great conviction. People said that to the Doctor a lot, too. "My friend Eratosthenes and I agreed on this recently."

The Doctor shared an amused glance with Amelia. She pressed her lips together very hard so she wouldn't laugh. "And how do you know?"

"If it were, you could end up being your own grandfather!" People said _that_ a lot, too. Amelia wasn't sure why, really. 

"Mmm," said the Doctor gravely. "I can't argue with that. So what happened after you discovered your Principle?"

"Well, I picked up the crown and put it in the water with me. Er...it seemed like a good idea at the time."

The Doctor waved his hand generously. "Lots of things do. I once told Tycho Brahe he should really look into polka dots for the false nose." He whistled and shook his head, remembering. "I take it it wasn't a good idea, putting the crown in the tub?"

Archimedes shook his head. "That's when the purple things appeared. Ah, here is my house!" They all looked at the house. It looked very ordinary and quiet. "Shall we go inside?"

"Best not," the Doctor said. "Which is the bathroom window?" Archimedes pointed at a window that was rather too high for even a tall grown-up to see in, on the left side. "Good thing the shutters are open!" said the Doctor. He thought about that for a moment. "Well, for now, anyway. It could be a very bad thing later. Up you go, Pond," and he lifted her up on his shoulders. There are times when it is very useful to be able to become several feet taller on a moment's notice, and this was one of them. 

Amelia peered over the windowsill. Sure enough, there was a bathtub in the room. It was shaped almost like a regular 21st-century tub, but it was made out of red clay instead of being white and smooth like Amelia was used to. There were pictures carved in the side, too, but Amelia had more important things to look at. "The water in the tub is moving around and glowing purple," she told the Doctor.

"Just the water?"

She looked more closely. "There's a sort of glowy purple fog rising off the water, too," she said when she was sure. "But not very high."

"How high?"

Amelia shrugged. She wasn't very good at guessing distances. "A few inches?"

"And what color purple?"

That she was good at. "It's the exact color of a plum."

"As I thought," said the Doctor, putting Amelia back on the ground. "It's Damaskinos."

Archimedes blinked. "Plums?"

"Well, in their own language their name is more of a strange buzzing sound. But they seem to mostly come through to this dimension in Greece and as Amelia said, they're the exact color of a plum. Hence, Damaskinos."

"This _dimension_?" Archimedes was beginning to look a little wild. This often happened around the Doctor too. 

"Don't worry about it," Amelia told him. "They've come from somewhere else. It's like magic."

Archimedes looked much less confused. The Doctor opened his mouth to say it wasn't like magic at all, and then closed it, looking sad. He hated when people were wrong about things.

"The goldsmith definitely cheated your king," he said instead. "He must have used a Feromagnanium alloy under the gold. There really shouldn't be any Feromagnanium in Greece of this time period. I'll have to pop by later and ask him where he got it. And of course, when a Feromagnanium alloy comes in contact with water it reacts to form free whigs. Wait, no, free tories, my mistake. That in turn attracts the Damaskinos who come through from their dimension and bond with the free tories, which creates that glowing effect that you see. If too many of them show up, it can weaken the boundary between the dimensions."

Amelia always listened very carefully when the Doctor talked. _Someone_ had to pay attention so as to spot if the Doctor had a very bad idea, and most people just seemed to get blank and start thinking about butter or collectible statues of puppies or something after the Doctor talked for more than a few sentences. She didn't understand most of the words in his explanation of the purple glow, but she knew what _weaken the boundary between the dimensions_ meant. Amelia felt a little nervous. "Like the crack in the wall of my room?" 

(When Amelia was growing up in Leadworth, there had been a crack in the wall of her room. It was a very scary crack. At night, Amelia could hear voices coming through it, from where no voices should be. Luckily the Doctor had shown up and rescued her, but it still scared her to think about it.)

The Doctor looked down. "Oh, no, not at all like that," he said. Then he did something funny with his eyes that Amelia thought meant either that he was lying, or that this was different, but just as bad. Oh dear. "Luckily, Damaskinos can be quite easily repelled by a potato!" he said, sounding happy again. "They hate the things, like houseflies and cucumbers. Archie, have you got a potato about the house?"

"A what?" Archimedes asked. "Is that from another dimension too?"

"Sir Walter Raleigh invented potatos," Amelia reminded the Doctor. He had a lot more of time and planets and things to remember than she did, so sometimes she had to remind him of really quite basic things about Earth history. (Actually, Sir Walter Raleigh only brought the potato to England from North Carolina, where it been brought by Sir Francis Drake from South America. (Some people say that the Spanish introduced the potato to Europe and that Sir Walter Raleigh was out of the picture entirely, but since Amelia went to school in England, she hadn't heard that part.) As you can see from Amelia's spotty recollection, she didn't always pay much attention to her teacher. 

The other thing she remembered about Sir Walter Raleigh was that he had put his cloak down over a puddle for Queen Elizabeth to walk over. She thought it was a silly story. If she ever became Queen of anywhere, she would just wear her wellies, and then she could walk _in_ puddles and not have to wait for anyone, which was much more fun.)

"Right!" the Doctor said enthusiastically. "Well, we'll just have to go and get one from him then. Maybe we'll see Bess! Lovely girl, Bess. Reminds me of you, Pond. Come along, back to the TARDIS!" 

Amelia was glad he was taking her with him. Sometimes, when he was going somewhere very dangerous, he left her behind. Amelia was quite annoyed by this. But she did her best to be patient, even though being somewhere dangerous without the Doctor was much scarier than being somewhere _very_ dangerous _with_ the Doctor, because she knew right down to her bones that he would always come back to get her. 

(Besides, _someone_ had to make sure the world didn't end while the Doctor's back was turned, and right now, that was Amelia. Sometimes she had to boss around grown-ups, who were bigger than her and thought that meant they knew better. But Amelia just remembered what Rory's mother always said when Rory told her, "But _Mum_ , he was _bigger_ than me!": "It's not size, Rory, it's force of personality that counts." Amelia had a lot of force of personality.) 

But there was nothing dangerous about going to get a potato--or at least, so they thought at the time, although they would find out differently very soon--so Amelia was allowed to go along.

"You're _leaving_?" Archimedes' beard quivered nervously. Amelia felt sorry for him.

"We'll be back in two jiffs!" said the Doctor, taking Amelia's hand. And off they went.


End file.
